


I'll re-write this whole life

by OrdinaryRealities



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, friendship fic, some homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 02:37:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19454584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrdinaryRealities/pseuds/OrdinaryRealities
Summary: Everything that comes after:In the end, they agreed on a letter. Something to offer their support and their appreciation but still respect Adam’s wishes, whatever they might end up being. After all, they had been on this earth more than six thousand years and Adam, whatever else he might be, was only an eleven-year-old boy.





	I'll re-write this whole life

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the poem "Backwards" by Warsan Shire.
> 
> I hope that I don't use too many American phrases. I tried my best from years of watching British shows but some of it... Does Pepper really tell Brian "Don't be wet"? It's what my subtitles say. I hope I used it right. I didn't want to substitute something else for the phrase the character actually used in the show. 
> 
> Without further ado, here's the story. Enjoy.
> 
> EDIT 7/4 for minor errors and slightly less clunky dialogue.

In the end, they agreed on a letter. Something to offer their support and their appreciation but still respect Adam’s wishes, whatever they might end up being. After all, they had been on this earth more than six thousand years and Adam, whatever else he might be, was only an eleven-year-old boy. 

Aziraphale was the one who suggested writing the letter. It was Crowley who thought that they should ask Anathema to pass it along. 

They made a list first, to plot out the points they didn’t want to miss.

Sorry for:  
a) Pointing at him and declaring that he should be shot  
b) Attempting to shoot him  
c) Being sarcastic about him and his friends saving the world just because Crowley had gotten tetchy (Aziraphale’s word) about Hell.

Thank you for:  
a) Saving the world  
b) Restoring the bookshop  
c) And Crowley’s car  
d) Being a good kid in spite of their best (or worst, in Crowley’s case) efforts

If he ever wanted them in their lives – in any fashion – here were phone numbers, addresses, not that he needed them, but they wanted to be clear, they were inviting him into their lives, and would wait for his invitation to insert themselves into his.

They were proud of the outline. It didn’t take them that long to send the letter. And then they walked down to feed the ducks. Not at St. James. A smaller park, less emphasis on clandestine, more on affair. Adam didn’t contact them. They went to dine several times over the course of a month – not at the Ritz but at a dozen smaller establishments where the menu took a few more interesting risks. Adam still didn’t call. They wandered around London, hand-in-hand, and tried to catch their bearings in a world where they suddenly weren’t accountable to any higher-ups for daily temptations or minor miracles, even if they did both like to keep their hand in.

It was near Christmas when Adam finally decided. The school term was about to end and it was very easy to remind his parents that he’d done that school project where he’d had to interview a small business owner – didn’t they remember it? He was Anathema’s uncle? – and he thought it might be nice if he were to bake some biscuits and take them up to London. Perhaps his parents could drop him at the man’s bookstore and take an hour or two for themselves? It was a perfectly safe area. 

He didn’t even have to use his powers, he didn’t think. He’d gotten more used to them now. He could usually tell when he was using them, that stretched feeling in the back of his head as he imagined the way reality really ought to be if you thought about it right. Adam had never had any trouble thinking about things right. His parents hadn’t agreed to leave him alone at the bookshop, but they would. Once one of them – the angel or the demon – caught sight of Adam, they would help him persuade his parents, he was sure of it.

For any would-be customer, it would take a minor miracle to show up when the bookstore was open. Adam had simply thought about it and he’d known. 

He held the tin of biscuits on his lap and silently went through his conversational points. He didn’t exactly hold it against these two that they had showed up to murder him (they had come to save the world) but it didn’t escape him that they, like Satan, had judged him without ever laying eyes on him. The note Anathema had handed him nearly ten weeks ago now had gone a long way towards salving that, and Adam needed advice. These two were, after some thought, the people most likely to be able to help. He chewed his lip as his father’s lovingly preserved car drew closer to the bookshop. 

Crowley had been trying to convince Aziraphale to close the shop and come upstairs for nearly half an hour now. (The demon had discovered a well-hidden love of sitting against his angel with his chin propped on the other man’s shoulder. Or sprawling half on the other man’s lap. Or draping himself over the other man’s back as he tried to cook. And that was aside from the dozens of ways they had discovered for Aziraphale to lean on Crowley. There was a very small voice in Crowley’s brain that suggested what he really liked was just the act of cuddling. Crowley ignored it.) 

Aziraphale scolded Crowley for nagging while privately deciding to close the shop as soon as the final customer currently withstanding his glare removed himself from the shop. He sat behind the desk and kept an ear out for any mischief his discontented demon might be getting himself into while he concentrated his well-honed glare on the recalcitrant customer. 

The door rang as someone else entered. Aziraphale let out a gusty sigh as he turned and then froze as he recognized the curls on the boy. A silence to his left told him that his demon had also noticed. The door jangled behind Adam as his parents walked in and Aziraphale took another breath. 

“Well, Adam!” He gave the boy an uncertain smile. 

“Adam said that he had arranged to take you to tea this afternoon?” Mr. Young looked like he had half expected Aziraphale to sweep them out of his shop as soon as they walked in.

Crowley turned on the Customer. “You heard the man. We’re closing shop for the day. Unless you’ve made your selection, you’ll have to come back another day.” He made a shooing motion. 

“Adam, you didn’t tell us you were making the man close his shop.” Deirdre Young smiled somewhere halfway between Aziraphale and Crowley. “We could have brought him up a different day.”

Crowley smiled. “Oh, no. We were supposed to be closed half an hour ago.”

He pretended not to see the look Aziraphale shot him.

Everything sorted itself out so that in a few minutes the disgruntled customer was taking refuge in a different bookshop, Aziraphale had placed Adam’s biscuit tin upstairs (“Oh, shortbread biscuits! Thank you, Adam, that’s lovely. You didn’t need to.”) and he, Adam, and Crowley were walking down the street one way to a nearby tea room while Mr. and Mrs. Young wandered off another way, Mr. Young mumbling in an undertone. “Do you think… I mean, I suppose he is *quite* safe with them, Deirdre?”

Deirdre Young, in her turn, was musing down a different line. “Adam knows he can tell us anything, right, dear? Did he tell you about- well. That they were…”

Adam waited until they sat down in an alcove with their tea and scones to begin. “Look, I’m not… Not entirely sure.”

Both men across from him tensed. (Well, perhaps not really men, but they resembled them well enough to be mistaken for men at the moment. Adam, having grown up in a family so loyal to C of E that they would not dream of avoiding going to any other church, hadn’t had the sort of religious education that would allow him to guess what the proper collective noun might be to include an Angel and a Demon.) “Not entirely sure of what, Adam?” Crowley’s voice was soft, but it jangled.

“Whether I want to have you in my life.” Both of the entities relaxed. 

“We did try to make it clear that you’re under absolutely no obligation to. We’re merely here if you need anything.”

Adam nodded, fiddling with a scone. “Did you ever meet him? I mean, Jesus?”

They exchanged a quick glance. It was Crowley who spoke. “I did.”

Adam had spent some time, since the apocalypse that wasn’t, thinking about his counterpart, about whether the Christ had gotten a briefing first or whether he’d been thrust into it the way Adam had, at a moment’s notice. He’d been older, but had he been any more prepared? Was he scared? In the shadows of Crowley’s voice, he heard for the first time what the weight of witnessing it might have cost.

Aziraphale broke the silence. “I met him, once or twice, but mostly I just listened. From a distance.”

Some of Mrs. Young’s cautions about ‘being polite’ and ‘not prying’ and ‘seriously, Adam, don’t ask them questions they don’t want to answer’ from the final organizing flurry came back to him uncomfortably. 

“I mean, you don’t have to talk about it. Him. I just wondered…”

“I don’t mind.” Crowley cleared his throat. “Only stands to reason you’d be curious. He was a clever man. Kind. Bright. He didn’t deserve it.” His voice darkened again.

“You were close?”

“I’m a demon, it wasn’t like I was going to be an apostle.” 

Adam wasn’t sure what it said about this situation, that he was already so comfortable with Crowley snapping at him. He felt that he had a read on the demon now.

“I didn’t mean like that. I just meant… He talked to you?” 

Crowley’s whole body was sulking right into the angel’s side. Aziraphale draped an arm across his shoulders as he answered. “For a while. I… He thought I was funny at first. What sort of demon is so ambitious as to try and tempt God’s son? But then he got busy and things started happening more quickly.” Adam and Aziraphale exchanged looks. 

Aziraphale clearly knew what kind of tempting had been going on. Adam supposed he could guess. It must have been more difficult, as it drew closer, to continue to say no to Crowley – he glanced at the demon, who was still looking pained – or to force the Christ figure to say no to him again. 

Adam moved on. “I expect that was very kind of you, to give him a choice.” 

He glanced at his wrists in morbid fascination. Mr. Tyler had been very impressed for about twenty minutes one day while Adam asked him everything he could think of about the crucifixion as it stood in the bible. He’d come here for different information. 

“Did he- That is, we were given different skill sets, right? Christ, Antichrist.” He looked at them. “Could he… make people do things? That sounds more like a skill for me than him.”

Crowley’s pinched shoulders straightened out again, a little. “I don’t believe he could. Free will and all. I always assumed it was more like the way I operate. I can suggest things to people, I can feed on their fears or their vanities, but Jesus, well.”

“Mr. Tyler said that he was a facet of God.” Crowley nodded, then looked at Aziraphale helplessly. Aziraphale shrugged. “Am I a facet of Satan?”

It was Aziraphale who answered. “I doubt it. God is different, you know. We’re all facets of her in some way. Satan…”

Crowley had uncurled enough to lounge. “Satan is just a fallen angel.”

Adam nodded. 

“Adam,” Aziraphale’s voice was kind. “You can just ask… whatever it is that you’re trying to say.”

Adam stuck a couple of fingers through the handle of his teacup and ran a single digit from his other hand around the rim. “Pepper and Brian and Wensleydale, well. They don’t quite remember – it – really. But they’ve been.” He bit his lip hard. He’d been practicing in front of the mirror to avoid just this eventuality. 

“Adam.” Crowley’s voice was understanding. “It’s alright.” And then, with a shrug, “are you a hugger?”

Although Adam, when he had planned this journey, had planned to stay at some emotional distance, at least, he immediately ducked out of his seat and buried himself in Crowley’s side. He thought it was the shrug that had done it. “They’re af-fraid of me,” he managed, and ducked his face before he could say anything else and risk his voice doing worse than a wobble. 

When it felt safe to lift his face again, Aziraphale’s eyes were suspiciously bright, and Crowley’s face was wet. For the first time, Adam allowed himself to imagine what it might have been like if, as they had hinted around the edges of their letter might have been the original plan, these two had raised him. 

“Adam,” Aziraphale’s voice was soft. “You might need to let them remember.”

“And then you’ll have to explain it to them,” Crowley’s was cautious. “Explain to them that this is who you have always been, and that they always have free will.”

“But they don’t!” Adam felt ready to hide his head again, but the thought of two grown men crying where anyone could see straightened his spine stubbornly. “I stopped them running, at the end of the world. Just before. They wanted to go home and I- I wouldn’t let them.”

He watched the other two exchange looks.

“Would you do it again?”

Adam felt the tears start up again. “Never.”

A hand lifted a handkerchief up to his face. “Blow.” He did, and then wiped his eyes to see the demon holding his snotty handkerchief. He snorted a little laugh in spite of himself and the other two smiled. “Adam, your friends chose to come with you to stop the world ending after that.”

Adam had considered this argument. “What if they just didn’t trust me not to decide to end the world after all?”

Aziraphale replied. “You took away their free will for a bit, but they still stopped you ending the world. That's not such a power imbalance.”

Crowley’s hand rubbed Adam’s back. “We could be there when you talk to them, if you think it would help. ‘Everyone panicked and did crazy things at Armageddon; these idiots tried to shoot me. I promise I’d never think about taking away your free will again, any more than they would shoot me,’ that sort of thing.”

Adam snorted. Oops. Crowley noticed before he could figure out how to ask and brought the handkerchief back into range. Adam blew again, grateful. 

“I think… I think that would be helpful, if you’re sure you wouldn’t mind.” He swallowed. “I think- Would it be OK, if you were… well, if you hung around? Just every now and then?” His voice smaller than he had meant, he added the question he had promised himself he wouldn’t ask. “How do I know that they ever really wanted to be friends with me in the first place? What if I just…” he reached for the word Crowley had used earlier, “suggested it to them?”

Aziraphale shook himself out as they stood. “My dear boy, how long have you been torturing yourself with that?” 

Crowley wrapped an arm over Aziraphale’s shoulder and let his other hand rest on Adam’s shoulder: a steadying weight. “Adam, you were friends with them long before you came into that sort of power. Free will, it’s,” Adam felt him glance at Aziraphale, something in the weight of the hand on his shoulder and the way Aziraphale faded back and then re-appeared almost immediately beside him. “Free will is the big one, Adam. Sure, as a kid you could play with the weather, you could probably have arranged things so I had never existed, or Aziraphale, or both of us, but forcing someone to do something, head on?” 

Crowley stepped through the door and turned Adam so they could look at one another. 

“You never forced them to be friends with you without meaning to. Even if you could have forced an initial friendship, you think you could have held them the first time they didn’t want to be friends with you anymore? Without even noticing?” Crowley spun Adam back and the three of them began walking back towards Aziraphale’s shop. “Listen here, Adam. Who do you think you are, anyway? God herself couldn’t do that accidentally.”

Adam felt himself relax into his customary slouch for the first time in a while. 

He curled against the car door on the way home, relieved and secure in the promise that the other two would be in Tadfield that weekend to talk to him and the Them. He stared out the window as the grey buildings went slowly by.

“How was your tea, Adam?”

Adam jerked and turned to look at his mother. “Wha- Oh! It was lovely. Really nice.”

“They weren’t-”

“Arthur-” 

“Deirdre, would you rather I didn’t ask? Look, Adam, they didn’t do anything, well, inappropriate, did they? Any funny business?”

Adam watched the window as the sky began to drip rain down on to it and imagined for a moment giving his father the honest answer. What would his father do if Adam told him that they had tried to shoot him to save the world the first time they had met him? (It was just as well that it hadn’t been Brian who was the Anti-Christ. He still told his mother everything. At least Adam had experience lying to his parents.)

“Mr. Fell did a magic trick. He pulled a quarter out of Mr. Crowley’s ear and then Mr. Crowley told him that he was going to make him disappear. And Mr. Crowley called him “angel” and Mr. Fell called him a demon, and then Mr. Fell stole half of Mr. Crowley’s cake…” Adam babbled on, pulling out all the pieces he could think of that were not Armageddon-related. 

His mother caught his eye in the mirror. “You really enjoyed them, didn’t you Adam?”

Adam barely paused to think, surprised by the fact that he didn’t even have to lie. “I really did. I really enjoyed them.”

At the appointed hour, Crowley parked the Bentley outside Jasmine cottage and the two of them began walking down to The Pit, as instructed by Adam. Crowley caught hold of Aziraphale’s hand as they walked into the woods. They heard the voices first, then saw the bicycle wheel back of Adam’s milkcrate throne.

“D-don’t you think it’s a little cold out to hang out out here, Adam?” asked the small bespectacled boy as they came into view. 

“Don’t be stupid.” The girl was shivering ever-so-slightly even as she said it, and Crowley sighed, spreading just a hint of warmth into the hollow as he did.

Adam was trying to lounge, but it was clear he was too nervous. The other three children were each picking up on it in their own way. The taller boy (must be Brian) was in the middle of a high energy game with the hellhound. 

They had agreed to pass themselves off as family friends until the Them’s memories had been restored. (Them, Crowley privately thought, was an eloquent ‘fuck you’ to all the grown-ups around them, as names for your gang of friends go. He was proud, in the confused way of a chicken who hatches a duck egg and then watches her chick miraculously avoid drowning in spite of all she’d done to help it along the way. Whatever Adam did, he was going to be something brand new.) He silently paired names with Adam’s friends from their talk the week before. Brian, Wensley, Pepper. Dog.

“Hello, Adam.” Crowley nodded pleasantly at the leader and then the gang. Wensley and Pepper frowned at them. Brian snapped straight up, taut. “Adam. Are they- are you quite sure that you’re safe?”

Crowley felt Aziraphale lean away from him to study the boy, who flinched, but stepped directly between Aziraphale and Adam.

Adam swallowed and stood up. “It’s alright, Brian. I asked for them to come out here. I- I haven’t been quite straight with you about something, and I wanted to… I thought… They’re here to mediate.”

Pepper looked completely unimpressed. “Adam, what exactly is so bad that you trust some random grownups more than us?”

“It’s not about trusting them more than you, Pepper.” Adam looked at his scuffed boots. “It’s about trusting them more than me.” 

“Whenever you’re done beating yourself up, Adam,” Crowley let go of his angel to cross his arms. 

Adam flushed. “Do you guys remember… in August?” and from the sudden stillness from all but the dog, they remembered.

“Adam,” Pepper’s voice barely shook at all, and Crowley’s estimation of her rose. He’d had several unpleasant nightmares himself, and demons didn’t have imagination. “Adam, what… What happened?” She crossed her arms. “Why did we forget?”

“I… I thought it would be better that way. That you’d- rather.” Adam had yet to lift his gaze. “I should have asked. I will, next time, if you…” he scuffed a foot along the ground.

“Please say we don’t need to save the world again.” Wensleydale was eyeing Crowley and Aziraphale like it might need saving from them. (In Crowley’s case, if you took “the world” to mean the people on it, he could even almost be considered right.)

“Are- Didn’t he try to shoot you?” Brian pointed at Aziraphale. 

Crowley stepped forward. “It was my idea. I’m a demon; I’m the bad one, not him.”

He ignored the fond little glance Aziraphale shot him. “My dear boy, I don’t think that’s the topic under discussion here.”

“He did, but,” Adam looked torn, but at least his eyes had moved up to his friends’ faces for the moment. “Well, they knew exactly who I am and what I can do if I want,” his voice broke and his eyes dropped again. 

“But they didn’t even wait to see if you would!”

Adam’s mouth did something complicated. “I didn’t wait and ask you to stay.” His voice was soft. “I had every reason to think that you would.”

“They’re not kids.” Pepper eyed Crowley. “That’s one thing when you’re eleven,”

“They were scared.”

Crowley looked at Adam. He hadn’t expected that. “Pepper, right?”

She nodded, wary.

He leaned forward to look her in the eye. “Pepper, you are absolutely correct. It was completely unacceptable for Aziraphale and I to act the way we did.” He took a breath. “We are going to do our best not to do anything else that inexcusable again.” 

She swallowed. “Why did you do it? What made you think that would be ok?”

Crowley nodded ever so slightly. “Adam is right. We were scared. We thought it was just going to be the two of us trying to save the world and that we hadn’t done a good enough job of it. We’d planned to be there for Adam when he was growing up, see, and it was only on his birthday that we realized we had the wrong kid.” 

It was Wensleydale who asked. “What happened to the other kid? The one who you thought was the Antichrist?” 

“Well he didn’t need us anymore.” Aziraphale chimed in. 

Pepper crossed her arms. “How do you know?”

“Are you just going to decide that Adam doesn’t need you anymore?” Brian flanked her, scowling.

“We’re here as long as Adam wants us to be,” Crowley promised, straightening his shoulders and throwing an arm across Aziraphale’s shoulders. “It’s the least we can do, since we weren’t here earlier.”

“Just as well we weren’t here earlier,” Aziraphale muttered. “Imagine if he’d been a little less human.”

They both shuddered while the Them watched. 

Crowley glanced at Adam. 

Adam squared his shoulders and changed the subject. “Anyway, I- I just-” He dropped his gaze. “Are you guys going to be able to trust me again? After- After that?” His voice had gone soft again. Crowley held out his other arm in a silent offer, but Adam stayed where he was, eyes on his friends.

“Don’t be wet.” Pepper rolled her eyes. “Of course we trust you.”

“But I made you stay. How do I know that I won’t do it again? Or that I haven’t, I dunno, forced you to forgive me?”

Pepper rolled her eyes again and repeated herself. “Don’t be wet. Adam, you stopped our bodies from moving. You didn’t change our minds about anything. And you won’t do it again.” She gave him a look. “You’re Adam.”

Aziraphale slipped an arm around Crowley’s waist and beamed as Adam relaxed for the first time since they’d arrived. 

“Is that what’s been worrying you for months?” Wensley asked. “Because, you know, you literally could have just asked. We’d have told you.”

“You’d have figured it out yourself,” Pepper agreed, “If you’d just stopped to think about it for a minute.”

Brian threw a stick for Dog and turned to Adam. “Is that how you got your parents to let you have Dog? Only, I don’t think it’s fair for you to be the only one with a pet, and Dog would probably be happier with some company.”

“Umm, but Brian,” Wensleydale’s face was innocent behind his glasses. “If one of us got a dog to keep Dog company then who would you hang out with?”

Aziraphale waved at Adam and steered Crowley out of the clearing with the arm around his waist. “We should probably stop in and see Anathema while we’re here. If we’re supposed to be her uncles.”

“Now, Angel,” Crowley began, and Aziraphale let him try to explain why they should just head back to England without telling a soul the whole way back to the car.

(Deirdre Young met them as they were coming out of Anathema’s cottage that evening and gave them an open invitation to stop in any time. “I don’t care what Arthur thinks,” she declared, “I want to make sure that Adam knows we care about him no matter who he is. That he always has someone to talk to if he feels like he can’t talk to us.”) (Arthur came around quickly enough.)

(Pepper and Adam were each other’s gay best friend well before they were in uni. Other friends Pepper met there were jealous that she’d grown up so close to someone else queer. Pepper always shrugged. “Just got lucky I guess.”)

(Adam never learned to stop worrying about letting other people have free will, but that kept him careful about what he used his powers for.)

**Author's Note:**

> I have not forgotten about my other stories. I have... At least two half-cooked Yuri on Ice stories I'm still working on and another Good Omens fic and then I have a Drarry story. All of them will be done eventually, and then I have a couple more plot bunnies, so. We'll see how it goes. I'm not leaving Yuri on Ice for Good Omens just yet. Not completely, anyway.


End file.
